Scientists are urging the British government to make more natural drainage systems as one of many ways to cope with the impacts of the climate crisis. They warn the UK that there will be more storms like Ciara and Dennis to come as rainfall will only intensify in a climate-disrupted future.
There is a growing threat of storm surges and flooding – which means there is a necessity to up the city’s defenses against water disasters. Increasing the number of natural drainage systems is one way to avoid having to build more sea and river barriers every few years.
Storm Dennis flooded many parts of Britain and killed at least three people. Politicians are finally beginning to acknowledge the link to the climate crisis. All parties agree, but their opinions on how to respond differ.
George Eustice, the new environment secretary, said that the UK has been spending billions of pounds on flood infrastructure. However, he admits that even these reinforcements are limited in how effective they’ll be in the face of a worsening threat.
He said:
We’ll never be able to protect every single household just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme, but we’ve done everything that we can do with a significant sum of money, and there’s more to come.
Luke Pollard, the shadow environment secretary, doesn’t think the government is doing enough to deal with the climate emergency and calls for a new strategy.
According to scientists in the Climate Coalition, England has suffered through a major flood almost yearly since 2007, which has resulted in around 100,000 damaged properties. They blame human-driven global heating for amplifying the chances of catastrophic weather because a warmer atmosphere can absorb more moisture. All that extra moisture gets dumped in shorter periods – meaning the UK will experience a month’s worth of rain in two days only.
Dr. Marc Stutter, a senior scientist at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, said:
Such storms are part of a shifting baseline for the climate and the state of the landscape on which the rain falls. While future scenarios for rainfall and runoff are highly uncertain, there is less doubt that the future has greater variability in extremes of rainfall, both in terms of flood and droughts.
The problems were worsened by the degradation and concreting over of natural buffers, such as soil and green spaces. Infiltration and places to slow, store and filter water need to be planned back into landscapes to add resilience to floodwalls; the alternative is we risk raising the walls every few years.
Dr. Mohammad Heidarzadeh, the head of coastal engineering and resilience at Brunel University, added:
The UK’s flood defenses are not suited to the current situation, which is characterized by high frequency and high-intensity climate events. While the interval for major floods was 15-20 years in the past century in the UK, it has dramatically shortened to two-to-five years in the past decade. Therefore, it is no surprise that several flood defense systems were overtopped or damaged by floodwater.
The solution is not just to pour more concrete into barriers and channels, which can sometimes make the situation worse. Instead, soft-engineering solutions are just as important. Non-structural solutions, such as managed retreat, sustainable drainage systems, and public involvement, are vital. The country needs further investment in its flood systems, but such investment should be within a holistic and integrated framework.
In 2015, storm Desmond devastated parts of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the Lake District. After this event, scientists deduced that human-induced change to the climate made extreme rain an estimated 40% more likely. Since then, the overall trend towards escalating extreme weather events has become well established. The Met Office says that, compared with 50 years ago, the maximum daily downpour has risen by 17% each year – from 64mm to 75mm; and the longest wet spell has risen from a median of 12.4 days to 12.9 days.
